The BBC claims that its new Playlister service can transform people’s
relationship with music, helping them to identify tracks they hear on the
radio or TV. Sophie Curtis tries it out.

The BBC today launched a beta version of Playlister, a new digital music service that lets audiences save their favourite tracks heard on BBC radio stations to a personal online playlist. Via Spotify, Deezer or youTube, such tracks can now be exported and heard in full at your leisure.

Playlister is not a commercial venture but part of the BBC's public service remit. The idea is that highly paid BBC DJs and presenters become 'curators' of musical content, available all the time to help fans discover more of the music they wouldn’t have otherwise found, using the applications they already use.

So if you hear a song you like on Lauren Laverne’s Radio 6 Music, but don't know what it's called, you can go to the Radio 6 website, where a list of the most recent tracks will be displayed. Clicking the 'Playlister' icon next to the track will add it to your playlist, allowing you to listen to a 30-second snippet of the song – but no more – to check it is the right one.

Once you have the tracks you want on your playlist, you click the 'Export your playlist' button, and you are given the option of exporting to Spotify, YouTube or Deezer. Provided you are logged in, the tracks you have added to your BBC Playlister playlist will then automatically appear in the application of your choice.

Playlister is currently only available for radio stations, but the BBC has big plans for extending the service. Over the coming months, Playlister will be fully integrated with the BBC iPlayer Radio app and DJs and presenters will be encouraged to create their own playlists.

Fans can follow these playlists and get notifications on their moble phones when new tracks are added. They can also copy entire playlists from the likes of Zane Lowe and Nile Rodgers into their own playlist, enabling them to discover new artists and impress their friends with their musical knowledge.

The BBC also intends to extend the service to television content, so eventually, when you are watching The Voice or Strictly Come Dancing and like the sound of one of the tracks, you will be able to press the Playlister icon on your internet-connected TV and that track will automatically be added to your playlist.

You could even add music from the soundtrack of a non-musically-themed television programme. So if you wanted to know which track was playing in the background at the Queen Vic in last night's episode of Eastenders, you could simply press a button to view a list of tracks and pick the one you like to add to your playlist.

Although Playlister currently only integrates with Spotify, Deezer and YouTube, the BBC hopes to bring in a much broader range of partners. These do not necessarly have to be streaming services, but could include applications like Apple iTunes, where users could export the tracks they intend to purchase.

"We’re kind of agnostic. We just want to make it easy for people to remember something, get great recommendations and play it back," said Mark Friend, controller for Multiplatforms and Interactive at the BBC. "You can download this list and take it down the shop with you if you like, or cut and paste it into another third party service. That’s all possible."

The service as it stands is still fairly basic – all of the tracks that you add using Playlister go into one long list, so there is no way to create a separate playlist for the gym, for example, or for a party. However, Friend pointed out that once your tracks have been exported to a third party digital music service they can be organised there.

Each of the third party services also offers its own challenges. YouTube, for example, offers multiple versions of any given track, so the BBC has had to work with YouTube to filter content to make sure that the tracks that are thrown up by the Playlist export are 'official' versions of those tracks.

Friend emphasised that Playlister is currently still in beta, and the BBC will be responding to user feedback on the new service before the application goes on full release.

Meanwhile, Spotify is the only music service of the three to offer a dedicated BBC Playlister area within Spotify. This means that tracks imported from Playlister will go into a dedicated playlist, which will appear in the catalogue of playlists in the left hand toolbar.

Chris Maples, Spotify's European vice president, said that while some people like having a search service where they can just find whatever tracks they want, a lot of people want that service to be curated, and Playlister offers an "amazing opportunity" to help Spotify do that.

“The BBC and Spotify share a passion for offering lovingly-curated, great music to music fans," he said. "From Zane Lowe’s Hottest Records of 2013 to the tracks from Later with…Jools Holland, you can enjoy them first through the BBC Playlister app on Spotify.”

BBC Playlister is available for free to anyone in the world over the age of 16.